A Tinderbox slows down a lot with pictures... how to find the problem,

Im preparing for a talk, and pasting various prompts into a new TB file and including some photos.
Opening notes has slowed down and the spinning wheel of death appears every now and then. There are only a few notes in the file so far, and Im sure its to do with the pictures.
Is there a way of finding out which ones are causing the problem, or are too many Megabytes in size.
Here is a screenshot, its a very simple map… just to give an idea of it

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Tinderbox isn’t a media manager. IOW, putting suitably sized images is an exercise left to the user. As images saved into notes are re-saved as a base-64 JPEG (regardless of original format).

The main suggestions, if you must embed images (as in your case here) is:

  • use simple bitmap formats like JPEG or PNG and don’t use 'wrapper’s like PDF containing the images you want.
  • make images of the size you want to see them on screen, no bigger as that’s un-needed ‘fat’ in the document that you won’t use.
  • don’t use higher resolution than screen resolution as again it is ‘wasted’ detail data.

The ‘how’ of doing the above is outside the scope of this forum and might best be taken up in a general graphics forum or forums for any graphics tools you may possess.

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Given the above, one method might be to just delete the images in the doc, and start over using images whose details you have checked.

Not really, as @mwra suggests, however, you might take a look at this: Tinderbox Training Video 13 - Working with media in your TBX files (Part 2). I show how you can pull in images from your drive through export code and attributes. You can then do you presentation with “preview” on. If you really want to see the notes in the map view, you can use $Fill, something the @mwra showed me yesterday, a video this is forthcoming.

I’m happy to take a look at your document and identify the pain point. tinderbox@eastgate.com

Thank you so much for your replies and help. All is now well.

As the talk is today I have quickly gone through the photos and replaced them with screen shots, which has done the trick. There weren’t too many, so it was easy.

I really like the way that the so called informal elements, like pictures or visual ornaments can be part of the thinking. It was not my intention to use TB as a media manager - it was much less deliberate, and I used a mixture of images from the Photos app and some screenshots, but I was not aware of the potential problem if the photos are loads of megabytes…
Perhaps TB could give a helping prompt or some sort of warning if you are pasting in a massive image without realising it. Or give a way of knowing the size of a note which might have inadvertently become oversize.

I look forward to watching your video, Michael,

Best wishes
Thomas

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And backstage we’ve been having a useful discussion of way to make all this work better.

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Fabulous!

A bit late to the game here. As mentioned in this thread and others integrating images in TB will quickly lead to large file sizes and there is an on-going discussion on how best to incorporate images. I follow two approaches:

  • reduce the image size to a minimum via resampling e.g. only as good as required for the screen and not better
  • use attributes with a link to the image

Not mentioned above is the fact that size of individual notes can be queried using the attribute EstimatedNoteSize which can help to quickly locate notes taking up too much space and slowing down the system.

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For those interested in this approach, here is the code I use to do exactly this:

<br>^if(^value($MediaFileName!=""))^<a href="^value($URL)^"><img src="^if($MediaPath)^^value($MediaPath)^^else^^value($MediaPath("TBXConfigNote"))^^endif^^if($MediaDIR)^^value($MediaDIR)^^else^^value($MediaDIR("TBXConfigNote"))^^endif^^value($MediaFileName)^" ^if(^value($MediaWidth!=""))^width="^value($MediaWidth)^"^endif^ ^if(^value($MediaHeight!=""))^height="^value($MediaHeight)^"^endif^></a>^endif^<br>^if($MediaCaption)^<b>Figure: </b>^value($MediaCaption)^ ^endif^ ^if($MediaSource)^(^value($MediaSource)^)^endif^</br>
I have a note TBXConfigNote that holds the $MediaPath and $MediaDIR that I want to have as a default for all notes.

You’ll see in the above code that I have conditions that will override this default if the note in focus has a local value for the path or directory.

It works really well. Also, I put this code in TextExpander, that way I can easily enter it with just a few key strokes.

I do the same thing for video and audio:

VIDEO
^if(^value($MediaFileName)!="")<video width="^value($MediaWidth)^" height="^value($MediaHeight)^" ^if($MediaPoster!="")poster="^value($MediaPath("TBXConfigNote"))^^value($MediaDIR("TBXConfigNote"))^^value($MediaPoster)"^endif^ controls><source src=""^if($MediaPath)^^value($MediaPath)^^else^^value($MediaPath("TBXConfigNote"))^^endif^^if($MediaDIR)^^value($MediaDIR)^^else^^value($MediaDIR("TBXConfigNote"))^^endif^^value($MediaFileName)^#t=^value($MediaStartTime)^,^value($MediaStartTime+$MediaDuration)^" type="video/mp4"></Video>^endif^<br>^if($MediaCaption)^<b>Figure: </b>^value($MediaCaption)^ ^endif^ ^if($MediaSource)^(^value($MediaSource)^)^endif^</br>

AUDIO
^if(^value($MediaFileName)!="")<audio controls><source src=""^if($MediaPath)^^value($MediaPath)^^else^^value($MediaPath("TBXConfigNote"))^^endif^^if($MediaDIR)^^value($MediaDIR)^^else^^value($MediaDIR("TBXConfigNote"))^^endif^^value($MediaFileName)^#t=^value($MediaStartTime)^,^value($MediaStartTime+$MediaDuration)^" type="audio/mpeg"> </audio>^endif^<br>^if($MediaCaption)^<b>Figure: </b>^value($MediaCaption)^ ^endif^ ^if($MediaSource)^(^value($MediaSource)^)^endif^</br>

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Ahh, estimatednotesize is a great attribute! Thanks. Ive found several notes where I have inadvertently pasted large images.
Many thanks
Thomas

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